What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than sewing up aprons! Last Sunday we had a great class at one of my local shops, Foothills Fabic and Threads, choosing fabric, cutting & sewing up aprons, from one of my latest patterns, 'Apron Strings'.

Australian Quilt Market was just a fantastic weekend. One of the highlights was REALLY meeting Amy Butler. Melanie and I were REALLY happy to get this shot:

Our booth ended up looking like this:

Here's a shot of some of my things:

(Yes, you do see a new 'Leanne's House' logo - there'll be more about that shortly).

A big thankyou to everyone at Creative Abundance (my distributor) for organising such a wonderful booth and all the hard work that goes into it beforehand as well as on the weekend and now all the follow up. Thought you might like to see some of the faces behind all that hard work. There's Becky, Erica, Nel and Jacques:

Somehow they manage to co-ordinate everything for nine labels and that's huge. Here's some of the designers:

Last night was fantastic! What a great event hosted at the Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne. Rosie, Melly,Gail, Melinda and I had a great night. Spending an evening listening to Amy talk about her inspiration and where it comes from (amongst other things) was just wonderful. Amy was very generous with answering everyones questions at question time and also when it came to signing books and chatting:

It was very inspiring for me because it seems that she's inspired by very similar things to me. I also think she's a 'shoe girl':

Rosie looked great in her new outfit that she whipped up using Amy's latest range of fabric:

When I finally got home I had lots of work to do including finishing the binding on a quilt for Quilt Market this weekend. It's obviously a very comfy quilt because when I got up from my stitching chair to make a coffee at 2am someone made them themselves very cosy:

The binding did get finished at about 3:30am:

I think it was worth staying up. I will have better photos when I do a real photo shoot next week but this was the studio wall this morning:

Amy Butler is coming to Australia, and yes, to Melbourne! We (being me, Rosie, Melly, Melinda, and Gail) are all just so excited and so filled with questions. Text messages have been flying through the air waves. Messages with questions like "Do I wear something I've designed using Amy's fabrics, like a bag?":

Do we wear clothes we've made using Amy's fabrics?"

"Is that tacky?"

Questions like "How much weight can I lose before Thursday?" Oh yes, we are one excited bunch of girls I can tell you. The babysitters are organsied and we are ready to go!

It's a good thing that I'm frantically getting ready for Australian Quilt Market and had fully intended a few nights working well into the wee hours this week - because I am so excited that I won't sleep anyway!

Leanne Beasley xxx

P.S. These two designs are from my 'Romancing The Road Trip' book. The wooden handled bag pattern is also free right here on my blog, just scroll down the left hand column to 'Free Pattern'.

New 'Flower Sugar' fabric from Lecien is out now! Of course I could not resist and HAD to have two meters of this divine big red flower and a meter of each of the spots! The fabric is a lovely heavy weight cotton weave that feels great and is lovely to sew with:

It's what I used for the journal cover in one of my latest patterns, 'Pretty Bedside set'. So if you'd like to make one exactly the same as mine you can use the lavender spot. I purchased the fabrics from Foothills Fabric and Threads if you'd like to mail order from them (they also have the pattern in stock):

I thought that I'd show you a sneak peek of my frantic stitching today:

These little four and a half inch blocks will be the border for the 'birds of happiness':

Back to sewing now...

Leanne Beasley xxx

P.S. If anyone is looking for Weaveline (this is the woven iron on interfacing that I use behind my stitcheries) it is available online from www.underthemulberrytree.com . I get a lot of requests for this, especially from overseas, so I thought this may help.